Plug It In, Plug It In: The Complete SEOPress Review
The SEO industry is fast approaching $80 billion.
If your business is at the top of the search engines, you have the opportunity to gain thousands of dollars in business. Since search engine rankings are so valuable, SEO will be an important practice for continued business success.
Continue reading this article as we go through a full SEOPress review. Learn whether SEOPress is as great as you've heard or if it is all hype.
Contents
The Only SEOPress Review You'll Need
We've gone into great detail in our review to give you all of the information you need to see if SEOPress is the right SEO plugin for your WordPress site.
Choosing the right WordPress plugins for your site is important since having plugins that are bulky or dangerous can cause problems. As you read the information below, you'll be able to see SEOPress is a safe, high-quality plugin, but is it the right SEO plugin for you?
Who Is the Creator Behind SEOPress?
If you've been around the web for a while, you may know SEOPress' creator Benjamin Denis. Benjamin Denis not only created SEOPress, but he's the creator of WPCloudy and WP Admin UI as well.
Denis created SEOPress while working full-time at an SEO agency. Within SEOPress' first year, it went from 0 to 10,000 installs. Keep reading below to see what SEOPress can do and why there are currently over 20,000 active installations.
What Can SEOPress Do? – Features & Benefits
SEOPress can do a lot, so I hope you have your favorite drink in hand and plenty of time to read through the rest of this SEOPress WordPress plugin review.
Before you get worried about how much money you're going to put out, you should know the free version does a fantastic job. If you do find you need the extras the pro version affords, you can pick the pro version up for $39/year. The good thing about this license is that you can have as many sites using the plugin as you want.
If you want multiple licenses with another SEO plugin like Yoast SEO, you need to pay extra when you add more sites. Let's look at the free version before we get into the extras you get if you buy the pro version.
When you download the free plugin and activate it, you will see its menu inside your WordPress dashboard. You will see SP in your left-hand sidebar in your dashboard.
Titles & Metas
When you are optimizing your site for on-page SEO, titles and metas are an essential part of this process. Customizing your titles and metas allows you to have total control over all of your site pages and posts. When you can control all the titles and metas for your pages and posts, you can set up SEO optimization easily.
In the Titles & Metas section, not only can you set the meta information for your whole website, but you can also choose to make some posts no index. If you have pages or posts that are similar or that you don't want people to see, this is an excellent place to set the rules.
HTML Sitemap
With the free version, you get the HTML sitemap. The HTML sitemap is designed to help lost visitors through your site while the XML sitemap is meant to help search engines find all of the pages on your site that you want to be indexed.
Important note
If you want the XML sitemap, you have to upgrade to the pro option. (Basically, a Must Have)
You can have both HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps on your website. It's a best practice to submit your XML sitemap to Google for the quickest indexing.
Google Knowledge Graph
If you aren't sure what a Google knowledge graph is, try going to Google and searching for your favorite actor or actress. Look to the right of the search engine results, and you're likely to see the actor or actresses photo, social media link, and any other closely related information.
Use SEOPress to upload your website's logo, social media networks, and phone number so your Google knowledge graph is complete. If you don't have access to SEOPress, the process of updating your Google knowledge graph may be up to chance and what Google can fetch.
Open Graph
Have you ever shared a blog post and the wrong image or description has shown up? The wrong information posting won't happen if you have open graph set up on your posts and pages.
Open graph tags allow you to push a specific photo, title and description. These tags allow your site to show up right every time instead of playing a guessing game about how they are going to look when you or other people share them on social.
Open graph tags allow for the most control over your site and how it is shared. While you can get the most control with these tags, it can be a time-consuming process to write each of your OGs. If you don't have the time to write each OG, you can at least copy and paste the first couple of sentences from your blog post into the field. (Not Recommended)
However, a highly recommended best practice we suggest following for the life of your website is to take the time to write custom copy in these fields. (Highly Recommended)
Keep in mind that the copy written here is important because it is what will show up on social media. How compelling this copy is can have a great deal to do with how high your click-through rate is.
Content Analysis
Writing for the search engines first is simply a thing of the past, it's important to always write for your target audience and nothing else. SEOPress helps you by analyzing your content to see if you're writing it properly.
Content has always been the most vital part of any SEO plan, but now more than ever – content reigns supreme.
When you create content for your site's SEO, it's not about stuffing keywords. Content isn't about creating as many posts as possible to target keywords. SEO is more about providing the reader with the most accurate and informative information they were searching for.
Google continues to put measures in place to make sure the best websites for their respective audiences are showing at the top of the search engines. The more your content proves to be the best solution, the more likely it is to rank. SEOPress helps you make your content easy to read and keyword relevant.
To get a head start on the best content, make sure you pay close attention to how you structure your content. How your content is displayed visually has a lot do with how well people can skim and navigate the content. If people aren't able to easily go through the content to see if it offers what they want, and most importantly, answer the questions they need to be answered, they're likely to click away.
When you use SEOPress, you will begin to learn the best practices for writing your content. As you continue to create content on your WordPress site, it will start to feel like second nature to write content that performs well in the search engines.
Remember, content only performs well in search if it first performs well with your target audience.
Google Analytics (GDPR Ready)
SEOPress allows you to add Google analytics to your site with ease. With a couple of clicks, your site is able to analyze and store data for exporting. If you have visitors from Europe, you can rest assured that you are GDPR ready.
Analytics is a powerful part of your content strategy. If you don't have analytics that shows you how successful your current strategies are, you won't be able to create new strategies. You also want to stay compliant with laws when you have international website visitors.
Import & Export Settings
Do you have more than one site? If you are creating another site, you're likely to want the same settings on the new site as you have on your current site. Use the import and export settings on SEOPress to import settings from your current site.
If you plan on creating a lot of sites or even a few sites on a regular basis, these settings can save you a lot of time. When you have a successful site, there is no reason to mess with success by trying to change the current settings and now you won't make any mistakes with these simple imports and exports.
Import Yoast SEO / All-in-One SEO / SEO Framework Post & Terms Metadata
If you are worried about losing all of the hard work you did on your site through any of the SEO plugins listed above – don't worry any longer. You can import all of your post and terms metadata, so you don't mess up any of your current settings. Another productivity win from SEOPress.
If you want to test out the plugin, this is a great way to do so since you can import all of your changes and see how they will look. If you don't like what you see, you can always reinstall your old plugin and put things back to how they were before.
No Ads & White Label
If you have people posting in WordPress on your behalf, you may not want them to know the tools you use. There is no trace of the SEOPress brand when you install the plugin, and ads won't cover your site like when using many of the other plugins.
Ads are not only annoying, but they can also be very distracting and take away from the productivity you aim to have when you are working within your WordPress dashboard.
On to the Pro Version – $39 Per Year
Now that you see all of the bells and whistles that come along with the free version of SEOPress, it is time to go through and see what the Pro upgrade adds.
The Pro version of SEOPress gives you all of the same benefits as the free version but with awesome add-ons like the following:
- Backlink Checker (Majestic API required)
- Google XML Video Sitemap
- Google Suggest
- htaccess
- Robots.txt
- Breadcrumbs
- Google Pagespeed
- Google Analytics In Dashboard
- 404 Monitoring
- Manage WordPress RSS
- Rewrite URLs as Desired
- Analyze Content for Broken Links with SEOBot
With this major upgrade, you can not only create better content, but you can provide a better user experience.
The breadcrumbs part of the plugin allows your users to see where they can go back through content easily. Instead of being lost on your site, it makes navigation easy, and it is great for internal linking.
404 monitoring and checking for broken links ensure your visitors aren't going to get lost on your site. When you know where the broken links and 404 errors are taking place, you'll be able to fix them for an improved user experience quickly.
When making changes to your site, it can affect your site speed. Having easy access to Google Pagespeed will allow you to make sure everything is operating properly and quickly. When you take care of your page speed, you can unleash the full benefits of SEO.
One of the latest Google updates was an update about site speed. When you optimize your site to load for mobile and desktop users quickly, your website will fare better in the search engines than slow sites that are non-responsive.
Coupling the benefits from the free version of SEOPress and the PRO benefits, you can see what a powerful tool it can be for your SEO efforts. With an easy export and import option, you may find this is the right move for your company to boost its SEO efforts.
Want to Learn More About SEO?
We share important information with you about SEO that goes beyond our SEOPress review, and how you can increase your search engine rankings. You can read more of our articles to increase your knowledge or feel free to contact us for any SEO help you might need.
Kevin achieved his certifications through SEMRush which is one of the best SEO tools and academies online for SEO. See how he can help take your business to the next level by using the contact form today.
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